Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 78.djvu/411

Rh of college grades, does certainly come nearer the correct frequency curve than the normal curve, or than that representing the present practise of any college or university in the country. In institutions where many sons of rich parents are dragged just above the failure line by tutors, the curve would be skewed even more than in Fig. 10.

As we proceed upward through the years of school and college we should thus expect to find the curve skewed more and more in a positive direction, provided the standards are appropriately higher each year and a new base line is taken for each successive group. Those who accept the principle of normal distribution only for freshman courses in college, or for any single period in the school life of the child, would be at a loss to prove its peculiar fitness for that period.

At least two institutions now enforce a distribution of grades on a scientific basis. At the University of Missouri, an A is approximately equal to an A, a B equal to a B, in a defined sense; so that grades may be intelligently and fairly used for administrative purposes. According to the definitions adopted in June, 1908, grades A + B must equal